Games

M4ALL educational games have been developed using the Kinect technology. They all offer customisation capabilities to enable caregiver, therapists and parents adapt the gaming experience to the individual requirements of each child. Each game comes with a comprehensive manual.

Pico’s adventure is a game for children within the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aimed toward promoting social initiation.The project i was developed as a collaboration between the “Cognitive Media Technology Group” of Universitat Pompeu Fabra and experts of the “Specialized Unit on Developmental Disorders” (UETD) of Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, both in Barcelona. The game addresses skills related to social initiation, understood as the promotion of behaviors such as: approaching and looking for others, trying to start social communication, and producing any verbal or gestural behavior for communicative goals. The game has been designed to work as a mediator of social interaction, aimed at promoting interpersonal relationships. Because of this, the game should not be played by the child alone and requires the constant supervision of an adult.

The Uni PacaGirl game aims to help children improve the skills of eye and hand concentration, visual perpection, motor planning and execution. It invites children to combine simultaneously many skills such as their attention, ability to coordinate well their movements in space and react quickly when needed. This goal is in line with the objectives for therapeutic exercises for dyspraxic children and/or children who suffer from ADHD. The idea is to make children highly engaged so that the motivation stays high to complete the game. Another game also developed by the Greek University is called RehaMaze , an easy and fun exercise Kinect game based on the concept of Mazes. The child is called to pick an avatar and drive it carefully through a maze with body and hand gestures such as jumping, sitting, hand swapping. This game can be valuable for special educators and therapists who try to help children with dysrpaxia and related disorders such as autism or ADHD to improve attention, concentration and visual perception skills, as well as enjoy physical activities, become active by focusing on familiar activities.

Screen capture from the Bubble Game (by POLIMI)

3 minigames have been developed by the Italian Partner University of Milan (POLIMI) and are devoted to children with Autism. They aim at promoting motor and cognitive skills as well as social play. The games involve various task to be performed alone or in group, such as hitting virtual objects using different parts of the body (“Bubble Game”), avoiding moving objects (“Space Game”), creating body postures, that replicate virtual shapes on display (”Shapes Game”). The structure of the games allows full parameterization of the characteristics of the game (shape and speed of moving objects, background colors, body parts to be used for interaction, shapes to be simulated) such that therapists, educators and parents can easily tailor them to the specific requirements of each child. The games have a visual approach based on 2D play environments with clean backgrounds and shapes, to better control for the visual and sound stimuli provided by the applications and to help children focusing on the game logics and tasks, the execution of body actions, and the coordination with peers. All games are strongly customizable according to the characteristics and learning needs of the specific child that plays with the system. This feature leads to a large number of playing opportunities even within the same game. The customization can be done by the therapist during the treatment sessions or by the children’s parents at home, due to the simplicity and ease of use of the configuration functions and interface. Games can also be personalized using different graphic themes for background and graphic elements or adding specific multimedia reward. The games automatically collect the scores obtained by players and the information relative to the played configuration, and generate a session report that can be used to evaluate or tune the treatment.

Child playing the Dalyn’s Dragon Island game in Lithuania

Dalyn’s Dragon Island is a full-body movement game that has been developed to support physiotherapy for children with motor impairments. By making specific body movements, the player controls the small dragon Dalyn and helps him accomplish several tasks. Playing the game enables children to practise various motor, cognitive and socio-emotional skills in a fun and engaging way.